FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told the Associated Press yesterday that Comcast had “violated our principles” when it came to managing their network. He accused Comcast of arbitrarily blocking internet traffic and failing to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

The AP says that Martin will recommend “enforcement action” against Comcast and that the FCC commissioners will vote on the issue on August 1.

funny how the government is holding Comcast accountable for “violating our principles” by doing something undesirable and failing to disclose to consumers that it was doing so. However, traffic shaping isnt something the government is paying them to do, as opposed to the wiretap that they were just pardoned from

@Michael Belisle: Thanks for the referral. So it seems that Martin is for media consolidation (boo!) and leans pro-consumer for cable issues (except having one company eventually owning all cable outlets?).
But good point, he’s not all bad. Thanks for that.

This is the kind of thing, if they announced it on a corporate blog, probably none of their customers would have noticed much. Since they did it in secret, that makes them out to be a nasty company. All they had to do was bury it in a long post of a company blog nobody ever reads. Still some would have been upset, but with public disclosure they would have been off the hook for the most part.

This is a shocking turnaround from uber-conservative FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s usual style. But wait — not really. By finally acting Martin may be able to keep the FCC relevant in this network neutrality debate. If the FCC had stood by and done nothing then Congress (do I hear Rep. Markey?) would have acted and told the FCC “We really do want the Internet to stay open and here are some mandatory rules for all.” Don’t be surprised if the FCC does little more than define some very vague “principles” again, leading Comcast and others to start charging “by the byte” for Internet access. This will be like the “grocery shrink ray” for the Internet!